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Senior Optical Engineering Manager

AI Summary
Lambda is seeking a senior engineering leader to own optical-network capacity planning, delivery, operations, and automation for its AI cloud backbone. The manager will build and develop a growing engineering organization, set a multi-year optical automation strategy, and ensure capacity arrives ahead of demand. The role requires deep experience operating large-scale, high-performance cloud or data-center networks and converting manual infrastructure processes into durable software. It partners closely with interconnect, infrastructure, supply chain, data-center operations, product, finance, senior technical leadership, and selected enterprise customers. Success depends on strong technical judgment, people leadership, operational rigor, and clear written communication in a high-growth environment.
Remote from
Ireland
Salary
EUR 152k–190k / yr
Employment
Full Time
Experience
Director
Published
Apply before
7 Dec 2026
Listing views
25
Application actions
2
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Opportunity details

About this role.

Lambda, The Superintelligence Cloud, is a leader in AI cloud infrastructure serving tens of thousands of customers. Our customers range from AI researchers to enterprises and hyperscalers. Lambda’s mission is to make compute as ubiquitous as electricity and give everyone the power of superintelligence. One person, one GPU.

If you’d like to build the world’s best AI cloud, join us.

Lambda, The Superintelligence Cloud, is a leader in AI cloud infrastructure serving tens of thousands of customers. Our customers range from AI researchers to enterprises and hyperscalers. Lambda’s mission is to make compute as ubiquitous as electricity and give everyone the power of superintelligence. One person, one GPU.

Our vision is bold and is not an incremental exercise. We will continually re-evaluate and reinvent our current ways of working and the automation underneath all of it, while operating the existing network flawlessly for all customer workloads.

Lambda has 10x’d over the last three years, and the network engineering organization is scaling to match. We’re looking for an Optical Engineering Manager to lead building our backbone and customer interconnectivity. This connectivity is going to play a critical role to ensure a flawless customer connectivity experience to our GPU cloud infrastructure. We’re looking for an experienced leader with deep technical expertise to own optical based outcomes end to end — and to build the organization that delivers it. You’ll hire and grow a talented team engineers, automate everything we do, shape team culture, and partner with technical leadership to deliver other mechanisms needed to stay ahead of our scale ambitions.

This role will report to the Senior Director of Capacity Delivery, working alongside a highly capable and passionate team of engineers.

If you’d like to join a great team of customer obsessed engineers building the world’s best AI cloud, come join us.

What You’ll Do

  • Own optical networking planning, delivery and operation end to end — and be accountable for capacity landing ahead of demand

  • Build and lead the organization that delivers it: hire, develop and retain engineers and the leaders who manage them, and design the team structure as the org grows

  • Set the multi-year technical strategy for optical capacity automation to ensure it continually scales

  • Convert manual process into durable software — the goal is a capacity pipeline that runs without heroics, not a better-organised set of runbooks

  • Own the operational bar for your org: how capacity work is planned, reviewed, shipped, measured and learned from when it goes wrong

  • Manage through leads and senior ICs, developing both — regular 1:1s, clear performance feedback, growth planning, and sponsorship of meaningful work

  • Partner and support our Interconnect team who negotiate, acquire and coordinate on external connectivity

  • Partner with Principal Engineers and technical leadership to maintain a high engineering bar across design, code quality and operational reliability

  • Partner with Infrastructure, Supply Chain, Data Center Operations, Product and Finance to align capacity roadmaps, forecast demand and manage long-lead dependencies

  • Represent your org’s work and technical direction to senior leadership, and to enterprise customers and partners where appropriate

  • Contribute to org-wide engineering process improvements — how we plan, how we ship, how we learn from incidents

You

  • Have 5+ years of optical engineering management experience

  • Proven track record of building and scaling engineering organizations that deliver mission-critical, high-performance cloud connectivity serving millions of users

  • Foster a data driven, automation first, high velocity organization

  • Familiarity designing, building, scaling and operating large-scale networks

  • Strong automation skills and track record accelerating a business delivery velocity on a large scale

  • Have a track record of building high-performing teams in fast-moving, technically demanding environments

  • Are skilled at translating ambiguous business and product goals into clear team priorities and executable engineering plans

  • Show strong judgment about when to go deep technically, when to delegate, and when to escalate

  • Track record of successful project and product delivery in fast-paced, high-pressure environments

  • Excellent communicator both written and verbal. You leverage high quality written artifacts to inform high quality decision making and get approval on problems and solution opportunities

Nice to Have

  • Experience in GPU cloud, HPC, or AI/ML infrastructure environments

  • Familiarity with large-scale data center or cloud networking — fabric build-out, capacity modelling, or network supply chain

  • Experience with infrastructure capacity forecasting and long-lead hardware planning

  • Prior experience at a high-growth infrastructure or cloud company

Salary Range Information

The annual salary range for this position has been set based on market data and other factors. However, a salary higher or lower than this range may be appropriate for a candidate whose qualifications differ meaningfully from those listed in the job description.

About Lambda

  • Founded in 2012, with 500+ employees, and growing fast

  • Our investors notably include TWG Global, US Innovative Technology Fund (USIT), Andra Capital, SGW, Andrej Karpathy, ARK Invest, Fincadia Advisors, G Squared, In-Q-Tel (IQT), KHK & Partners, NVIDIA, Pegatron, Supermicro, Wistron, Wiwynn, Gradient Ventures, Mercato Partners, SVB, 1517, and Crescent Cove

  • We have research papers accepted at top machine learning and graphics conferences, including NeurIPS, ICCV, SIGGRAPH, and TOG

  • Our values are publicly available: https://lambda.ai/careers

  • We offer generous cash & equity compensation

  • Health, dental, and vision coverage for you and your dependents

  • Wellness and commuter stipends for select roles

  • 401k Plan with 2% company match (USA employees)

  • Flexible paid time off plan that we all actually use

Equal Opportunity Employer

Lambda is an Equal Opportunity employer. Applicants are considered without regard to race, color, religion, creed, national origin, age, sex, gender, marital status, sexual orientation and identity, genetic information, veteran status, citizenship, or any other factors prohibited by local, state, or federal law.

Apply now >

This job listing has been manually reviewed by the Jobicy Trust & Safety Team for compliance with our posting guidelines, including verification of the company's legitimacy, accuracy of job details, clarity of remote work policy, and absence of misleading or fraudulent content.

Role DNA

A quick view of the complexity, pace, ownership and collaboration implied by the job description.

Job Complexity

5/5
EasyHard

Pace & Pressure

5/5
RelaxedFast-paced

Autonomy Level

5/5
GuidedFull ownership

Communication Load

5/5
IndependentCollaborative
AI insightThis is a senior leadership role accountable for mission-critical optical connectivity, long-range capacity outcomes, organizational scaling, and operational reliability. It combines specialized network expertise with people management and cross-functional decision-making under rapid-growth conditions.

Salary analysis

Estimated compensation compared with the broader EU market for similar roles.

Estimated job median (per year)Market rate
€171,000
EU market range (per year)€145k–€200k
AI insightThe employer discloses a yearly base-salary range of €152,000–€190,000, with a midpoint of €171,000. The estimated European market range for a senior optical engineering manager in large-scale cloud infrastructure is €145,000–€200,000 per year; estimates are indicative and do not include equity or benefits.

Core skills

Skills and capabilities most closely associated with this opportunity.

Sample interview questions
How have you built and scaled an engineering organization responsible for mission-critical network infrastructure?

I start by defining clear ownership boundaries, service objectives, and a team structure that supports both delivery and operations. I hire for complementary technical and leadership strengths, establish regular coaching and performance practices, and use measurable reliability and capacity outcomes to guide team growth.

Describe how you would ensure optical capacity is available ahead of projected demand.

I would connect demand forecasting with a rolling capacity model that accounts for utilization, lead times, redundancy requirements, and deployment risk. I would create automated planning and review mechanisms, define escalation thresholds, and partner early with supply chain, data-center operations, and interconnect teams on long-lead dependencies.

What is your approach to replacing manual infrastructure processes with automation?

I identify workflows with high frequency, operational risk, or dependency on individual expertise, then standardize inputs and desired outcomes before automating them. I prioritize observable, tested, reversible systems with clear ownership, so automation improves reliability rather than simply accelerating an unclear process.

How do you balance technical depth with delegation as an engineering manager?

I go deep on architecture decisions, reliability risks, and critical execution blockers where my context adds value. For implementation and routine decisions, I establish decision principles, assign accountable owners, review outcomes through written artifacts and metrics, and intervene only when risk or ambiguity warrants it.

How would you manage a significant optical-network incident affecting customer connectivity?

I would ensure immediate incident command, customer-impact assessment, and clear technical ownership for mitigation. After recovery, I would run a blameless review focused on root causes, detection gaps, capacity or design improvements, and concrete follow-up actions with accountable owners and deadlines.

This analysis is generated from the job description. Salary estimates, role characteristics and sample answers are guidance, not employer-provided facts.
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